Wednesday, January 16, 2008

Can't Catch a Break

Sunday I awoke to find that I wasn't coughing. Alleluia! My bronchitis was gone! I spent the whole day waiting for the hack-attacks to start, and while I coughed a few times, I never ended up sounding like an emphysema patient.

I headed to bed excited about the prospect of going to work healthy.

Then I noticed the heat was out. Our furnace was blowing cold air. I went and saw that there was no flame, and the blower was running constantly. Great.

So I went to bed (our house takes a while to lose its heat). I awoke at 5:30 feeling a little warm, a little woozy, and just a hair nauseated. Oh well, whatever; I took advantage of my early waking to hit the shower and begin my morning. I got dressed, headed downstairs, made plans for calling a furnace repair-man, and pulled out the materials to make my breakfast. For some reason, though, just looking at the english muffins made me think better of eating.

Alastair got up, I went and sat with him for a couple of minutes, and then it hit me. I was going to throw up. Not in a few minutes, but right now. I plopped the boy on the floor, ran to the bathroom, and barely had time to open the toilet.

I think I slept about 20 hours on Monday, give or take. When I wasn't sleeping, I was huddled in the bathroom, trying to eat crackers, or crying silently. It was probably just about the worst I've ever felt. Every single time I got out of bed, I wound up getting sick. I wasn't sure if I was dizzy or not, but I definitely had no equilibrium. At one point I resolved to get to Patient First, just to see if there was anything they could do for me. I donned a pair of pants, laid back down, grabbed my pillow and slowly crawled down the stairs, laid down on the floor with my pillow, and gave up in tears. Yeah, it sucked.

Amanda slept downstairs to avoid whatever cooties I had, and I developed a nice little fever to go along with all my other problems.

Tuesday was convalescent care. No more puking, but still very little eating. I think I've had 3.5 pieces of bread, 6 crackers, 2 little cups of applesauce, and a bowl of chicken noodle soup in the past 2 days, and that includes this morning's breakfast.

But today I'm back at work. I feel better, mostly. I'm still a bit nervous about eating, but hopefully some lunch solution will present itself soon.

My darling wife took wonderful care of me throughout it all. Thanks, Babe!